The Swiss may soon discover that nationalising the country's money is no way to save capitalism

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Switzerland is holding a referendum this weekend on whether to switch to a new system of "sovereign money"

One of Switzerland’s defining characteristics is its love of referendums – direct democracy in action. Many of these votes are on relatively obscure, or seemingly trivial, matters, a description which might seem to apply in spades to one of the two national plebiscites scheduled for this weekend. Yet the apparently arcane nature of the subject matter is in this case deceptive, for it speaks to a mass of seething, anti-establishment discontents and yearnings which are very much of our time and not at all uniquely Swiss; it’s called Vollgeld, or the sovereign money initiative.

There is no simple way of explaining the issue, so it is perhaps best to start by setting it in the context of the Global...